从语言共同体到种族主义象征——近代“雅利安”观念在欧亚大陆的流传轨迹

From Linguistic Community to Racist Symbol——The Spreading Track of the “Aryan” Discourse in Modern Eurasia

“雅利安人”作为纳粹种族主义理论的象征在近代世界历史中起到了非常负面的作用。然而“雅利安人”这一词语最早见于《阿维斯陀》《吠陀经》等古代典籍,是古代印度—伊朗人的自称,并无种族主义内涵。近代欧洲的知识分子赋予了“雅利安人”种族主义含义。从欧洲东方学衍生出来的历史比较语言学重新发现了古代“雅利安人”这一词语,并随之将其引入历史学与民族学的讨论之中。而从皮克泰、戈比诺到休斯顿·张伯伦等知识分子则不断将人种学与种族主义要素添加进对“雅利安人”的讨论中,并最终形成了希特勒的人种优越理论。“雅利安人”观念在欧洲的演变体现了近代欧洲知识界将来自“东方”的知识单向度化、片面化、狭隘化,并最终彻底嬗变为欧洲种族主义的一部分,与其本身面貌大相径庭。

The term"Aryan"has played a very negative role in modern world history as a symbol of Nazi racist doctrine.However,the term"Aryan"is first found in ancient texts such as the Avesta and the Vedas,and served as an self-identification for Indo-Iranians,had nothing to do with racist connotations.It was the intellectuals of modern Europe that really gave the term"Aryan"a racist connotation,as the historical comparative linguistics,which derived from European oriental studies,rediscovered the ancient term"Aryan"and subsequently introduced it into the debate of History and Ethnology.Intellectuals including Adolph Pictet,Arthur Gobineau and Houston Chamberlain continued to add ethnographic and racist elements to the discourse of"Aryan",culminating in Hitler’s theory of racial superiority.The evolution of the discourse of the"Aryan"in Europe reflects the unidirectional,one-sided,narrow-minded and ultimately radical transformation of knowledge from the East in modern European intellectual,which eventually completely became a series of knowledge of European racism,thus disfigured its reality.